the cultural stress chronicles [part 3]

Before I get into this post, I had a request that I back up and define my terms.

What in the world do I mean by cultural stress? Basically I am referring to the anxiety and frustration and other emotional responses I have had to "normal" situations in my current culture (the US) that because they are no longer familiar to me (ie not experiences I have had in the last 3 years), make me feel inadept and produce a sometimes disproportionate response.

When I say cultural, I am thinking of the day-to-day aspects of society (food, how people greet, transportation, the way things are organized, available technology used to accomplishs tasks, language, etc). So I experience "cultural stress" when say, my English vocabulary proves rusty and a Spanish word comes out instead. Or when I'm driving around San Antonio and am suddenly lost and feel frustrated because I feel like I should know my own city better (this actually happened today). My first culture, which in theory should be completely comfortable, suddenly is not. Typically that happens to people who have thoroughly adapted to a new place, gotten used to different ways of doing things (going to market to shop, for example, or taking buses everywhere) and then are dropped back into their former context, which in the meantime has also advanced (exhibit A: the iphone?!).

I felt a surge of this cultural stress this morning again when I completely missed my intended exit without even realizing it, drove to Wal-Mart to pick up some photos, and was suddenly overwhelmed. First, I thought the photo section would be in the front and easy to find, but in fact it had moved to the very back. Then, as I wandered through the store, I felt like I was in daze. There's just nothing like a gigantic box of a one-stop-shopping store to stop me dead in my tracks.

Then, I headed over to Kinko's to make some copies. This is something I have of course done many times here and in Nicaragua. However, I was using special paper and I think I tried about 5 different combinations of placements of my document and the paper before I found the one that worked. (The actual diagram on the machine of how to place the paper was wrong!) In the midst of this process, I find myself growing increasingly frustrated and tearing up for no apparent reason. It's just a bunch of silly copies, right?!?!? But this is what culture stress is like--a seemingly familiar situation gone awry, and wazam! I feel lost and out of control.

Unfortunately, I'm sure it's not the last time.